


our own desert places

by shuofthewind



Series: Le Monde Solaire [4]
Category: Doctor Who, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Doctor Who, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 14:04:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3384374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blue Baggins is a musician trying to make her way through London when she walks smack into an odd blue box. And then, of course, things get worse.</p><p>[<em>"“Remember, we showed up at that birthday party in the eighties—”</em></p><p>
  <em>"An accident; the TARDIS gets indigestion—”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“And then that clarinet concert—”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Oboe,” says Blue in spite of herself, still backing away, “I play the oboe—”</em>
</p><p><em>“And then we jumped back to the nineties when the orcs tried to mass against that primary school, remember, and now we’re here.”</em>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	our own desert places

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know where this came from. I don't care.
> 
> Half Britspeak, half American English. I really have no shame. 
> 
> Unbeta'ed. Again. If anyone really cares, please let me know. XD
> 
> Also! In case you're interested, this is my facecast for all versions of Blue(bell) Baggins: [link](http://www.theclosetfeminist.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Meghan-Markle-11.jpg)

She’s just bowed out of a second encore at her first really successful concert when she notices the box.

Blue thinks it’s a prop, at first. The theatre Drogo’s booked for her is used for plays and musicals and things far more often than it is for concerts, and so there are oodles of sets and things in the back rooms. The room they’ve offered as her dressing room (which is silly; she’s not some famous musician with a different costume for every piece, she’s just an oboist with one decent dress that she keeps in the back of her closet) is taken up almost entirely by the pieces for a _Julius Caesar_ set, so it’s not as though there aren’t plenty of props around.

This one catches her eye, though. She can’t say she’s ever seen a _blue_ phone box before. The ones she haunts around London (free WiFi, if you can snag it quick enough) are all red as sunburns, but this one’s the same rich blue as the streaks she puts into her hair. She tightens her hands around her oboe, and frowns at it for a moment, but then dismisses it. After all, it was probably there before. She’s just a brainless clot who wouldn’t see a rabid dog if it bit her on the nose.

She runs into Lobelia on her way out the back door, and forgets all about the bright blue police box. Having a screaming fight with her second cousin by marriage and who knew what else has a tendency to make things fly out of her head.

.

.

.

It’s nearly a year later when she sees it again, and she’s forgotten all about the funny prop in the back of the old theatre when she stumbles across it. Blue’s cutting through an alleyway towards Temple Church (her cousin Primula’s baby is being christened today) when she quite literally walks right into the thing, because she’s too busy paying attention to the snow on the ground and the way her high heels are slipping to realize that there’s a great honking _box_ in the middle of the path. She can feel the thin bridge of her spectacles snap against her face, and a sudden sharp pain as the plastic digs into her nose. There’s another pain in her wrist as she hits the ground, the snapping sort, and she looks blankly at her arm through blurry eyes (both tears and astigmatism) to find that her wrist is looking very crooked and not well in the slightest. At least her heels haven’t snapped off, she thinks distantly. Then she starts to cry, because there’s slush seeping into her knickers through her nice church dress and her wrist is broken and she’s so bloody stupid sometimes she could brain herself, she really could. Blood from the cut on her face speckles her white skirt.

“ _Hell_ ,” she says. “Bloody Christ.” Her wrist _hurts._  

“Now, _that_ was a truly impressive tumble,” says a voice, and Blue looks up and squints through her hair. It’s a man, she thinks. He’s short, or short-ish—he’s taller than her, anyway—and his hair is a bit shaggy for this day and age, but he’s not laughing at her. She thinks he might be smiling, but he’s not outright laughing, and that keeps her from wanting to kill him. “Are you all right?”

He sounds like Yorkshire by way of Ireland, maybe, and it helps. Blue looks down at her feet again (one of her shoes has come off) and then accepts his hand up, holding her broken wrist protectively to her chest. “I’m just an idiot,” she says thickly. “That’s all. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so silly.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He’s snagged her purse before she realizes it, and she really ought to be worried about that, but he doesn’t seem inclined to run off with it in the slightest. “Your wrist looks terrible. And your face is all—wait.” He tugs a bit of cloth from his pocket, and sets it to the cut on the bridge of her nose. Blue winces before she can stop herself. “Can I call you a cab? Only you fell pretty hard, so you might want to get your head looked at—”

“I’m fine. I just—this damn _thing_.” She wants to kick the blue box, but all she does is flip it off with her good hand. The man jerks a little, and looks between her and the box and back again. She can’t quite make it out, but she thinks he might be grinning. She kind of wants to flip him bowfingers too, for that, but she doesn’t. Her wrist hurts too much. “I didn’t whack my head, just—snapped my wrist on the pavement, because I’m so—fabulously skilled at falling.” She takes the handkerchief from him, and holds it to her bloody face. “Thanks for asking, though. ‘skind of you.”

“You can see this?” says the man, and knocks his first two knuckles against the stupid blue box. Blue frowns before she catches herself, and then has to bite back a curse when her nose throbs.

“I can see it? What do you mean? It’s right _there_. Probably has my nose-prints and bloodstains all over it and everything.”

He knocks twice on the door again. “Thought she was looking for something. She’s been jumping ‘round London for a full hour, y’know. At least, that’s what Tauriel says. I’ve no idea what the TARDIS does, most of the time. I just watch her fiddle with the doodads.”

Blue stares until she catches herself. Then she peers ‘round the edge of the blue box, hoping one of her family has finally realized she’s not there. Or that she’s late. Or something. _Brilliant. My rescuer’s also mad._ “Right,” she says, uncertainly. “Well. Thanks, and all that. I’m—I’m going to catch a cab, now.”

“Wait,” he says, but at that moment, the door to the blue phone box pops open, and a very tall, very red-haired woman leans around it to peer at them. She’s wearing a pair of very thin, modern spectacles, and her hair hangs down to her waist.

“Kíli,” she says. “Stop pestering the locals, if you please. We do have a schedule to keep to. Important schedules.”

“Lies,” says the man called Kíli. He’s maybe three inches taller than Blue out of heels, which puts him at a hundred-sixty-five centimeters, _maybe_. He’s bloody small, for a bloke. Then again, she doesn’t have much room to talk. The red-haired woman’s much taller than either of them, though, _and_ she’s wearing heeled boots. Or Blue thinks she is. Her spectacles are still in pieces on the sidewalk, so she can’t really tell. “You don’t have a schedule any more than you have an Ereborean water clock.”

“I think I do have one of those, somewhere,” says the tall woman. “I think your great-grandfather gave it to me. Possibly.” She tugs on a strand of hair by her cheek, and focuses on Blue. “And who have you picked up this time? I told you before. No pets.”

“I’m not a _pet_ ,” says Blue sharply, while at the same time the man called Kíli says, “I think she’s the one the TARDIS has been looking for,” and shoves her at the red-haired woman without warning. Blue stumbles, and catches herself just before she faceplants into the tall woman’s cleavage. Which, she has to admit, is quite lovely. Blue curses under her breath, but in the next instant, the woman with the red hair has Blue’s chin in her hand, and her face tilted up for study.

She’s quite lovely closer, too, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The strand of hair by her cheek wasn’t a lock, but a braid, and her eyes are a very pretty greenish-grey that reminds Blue of shadows. She flushes wildly at the thought, because bloody _hell_. She’s not about to fawn like a poetic Year Niner about some stranger’s _eyes_ , not when some bloke’s shoving her around and saying silly things about invisible police boxes.

The woman stares at her for a long moment. Then she lets Blue go, and says, “Hm.”

“Don’t _hm_ me,” says the man called Kíli. “You didn’t know what the TARDIS was following any more than I did, admit it! I guessed something before you.”

“You did _not_ ,” says the woman. Blue collects her bag (Kíli set it on the ground at some point) and takes two steps back.

“Remember, we showed up at that birthday party in the eighties—”

“An accident; the TARDIS gets indigestion—”

“And then that clarinet concert—”

“ _Oboe_ ,” says Blue in spite of herself, still backing away, “I play the _oboe—_ ”

“And then we jumped back to the nineties when the orcs tried to mass against that primary school, remember, and now we’re here.” Kíli turns, sounding very pleased with himself, and then yelps when he realizes that Blue’s about half a dozen yards away. “Wait, don’t leave, we’ve been looking for you!”

Blue fumbles in her purse, and pulls out the taser that her American cousin sent her for her thirtieth birthday. “You come near me, I’ll—I’ll crush your testicles, I swear I will—”

“No need to get violent, hey? Just—listen for a moment, would you? Tauriel, tell her!”

But at that moment, a cold, hard, wet hand seizes Blue by the back of her neck, and Blue reacts. She drives the taser hard into the grey— _grey_?—forearm with a scream, and presses down hard on the button. Whoever’s grabbed her shoves her away in a hurry, and with a roar that about splits her skull. Blue takes two stumbling steps forward and then falls again, and lands hard on her broken wrist. The world whites out for a moment. She might have vomited. She’s not entirely sure.

When she comes back to it, someone’s put her specs back on her face. They’re _fixed_ , miracle of miracles, and that means she can see the swarm of—of _whatever_ these things are, piling into the alleyway between Fleet Street and Temple Church like salmon swimming upstream. The woman with the red hair, Tauriel, is flashing through the crowd of grey, twisted, distorted man-things, and she has _knives_ ; blood spatters the kerb. In front of her is the man with the long dark hair, Kíli, and he has a _bloody bow and arrow_.

Blue screams again, and scoots back into the police box. Or she means to. She keeps scooting until she realizes she’s scooted _inside_ the thing, and that she’s—well. She hasn’t hit the back wall yet.

“It’s bigger on the inside,” she says, and then she faints dead away, the scream of the awful grey man-things echoing in her ears.

.

.

.

When she finally wakes, she has a splitting headache, and the bed she’s lying on is vibrating, just a little. Someone’s wrapped her wrist and laid it into a cast, and there’s a smiley face inked on the back of her hand. She stares at her wrist for a long moment, and then reaches a hand up to her face, to the cut and her repaired spectacles. The cut’s been touched up too, held together with a bit of sticking plaster, and her specs—well, there’s a crack through one lens, but the bridge is as good as new. No Harry Potter-esque tape to it, either. She looks at it for a long moment, and then pushes her specs back onto her face (gingerly, to avoid breaking open scabs and things).

Her bag is sitting in a chair next to the bed, and the bed itself is in a tiny room that seems to be taken up by more than half a closet. There are shirts and dresses and gowns and coats and trousers from all eras, like a costume gallery, but there are also unitards and any number of funny sashes and things that she can’t remember seeing even in the most esoteric of her uni sociology classes. Some of them are made of very odd fabrics. Blue swings her legs over the edge of the cot, and winces at the bite of light against her eyes before standing. She can’t see her shoes anywhere, and there’s a hole in the toe of her stockings. When she checks her phone, it has maybe six percent battery, and no signal. She turns it off before she loses all of it, and then pads her way out of the costume room, into a long hallway that seems to take funny twists and turns for no reason at all aside from whimsy.

Finally, the hall opens out into a wide room. It’s lovely, she thinks. Green trimmed with a bit of grey, the bulbs in the walls tinted gold. There’s a strange whirring sound coming from the mad scientist contraption that takes precedence in the middle of the room, but other than that it’s quiet. It’s also quite empty. She watches the hypnotic play of green and gold light through the central mechanism for a while, clinging to the door frame.

“You’re awake,” says Kíli, and she jumps and screams. Her taser’s gone, left behind in a London alley; when she whips her hand around to slap him, he blocks her without thinking about it. He’s beautiful too, she realizes with a dreadful start; he’s scruffy and a bit unkempt and gorgeous in the most unassuming way, and she could smack him for it. She still kind of hates him, though. “Good. You’ve been asleep for ages.”

“Where the _hell_ am I?” Blue yanks away from him, stepping out of reach. “Take me home this instant! I’ll call the police on you, I swear I will.”

“Nonsense.” It’s the woman, Tauriel. “Human telecommunication devices rarely work in the slipstream. Impossible, really. Besides, we cannot take you back to Earth, as of yet. The orcs are still looking for you, and I, for one, would like very much to know why.”

“Back to _Earth_?” says Blue, who feels as though she’s either been roofied, dropped into an alternate dimension, or possibly both. “You’re mad. _Let me out of here_. I don’t—I won’t be part of your—whatever the hell this is. Take me _back_.”

Tauriel hooks hair behind her ears. They’re _pointed_ , Blue realizes, long and elegant, and in a way that looks completely real. _Make-up_ , her brain mutters, _costumes,_ but why on earth would someone do that? “You are not entirely human,” she muses, studying a read-out on one of her blinking green consoles. “At least, according to the TARDIS you are not. Kíli, would you explain it to her, please? I must look into this.”

“’course,” says Kíli, and walks past her, hands tucked into his pockets. He’s wearing a long coat that reminds her of a royal robe, and heavy hobnailed boots that clunk against the floor “C’mon, Bluebell Baggins, oboist,” he says. “The view out the door’s spectacular.”

Door. She gulps, and then follows him, careful to keep out of reach. If there’s a door, there’s a way out, she tells herself. If there’s a way out, she can _get_ out, and then—bully someone out of their mobile, or something, and call the police. This is a plan she can work with. Yes.

Or, at least, it’s a plan she can work with until Kíli opens the door and she nearly walks out of it _into the middle of space._

Blue screams. Kíli grabs her by the shoulder and yanks her back before gravity (or rather the lack of it) steals her away. Blue screams again, seizes the door, and slams it shut. Then, panting, she opens the door, and peers out. She knows that nebula, she thinks. The Horsehead Nebula. She’s had a poster of it on her bedroom door since she was sixteen. She shuts the door one more time, and then opens it, and stares out into the black. Kíli, beside her, nudges her shoulder lightly with his own.

“Brilliant, isn’t it?” he says. “The Doctor picked me up off of Ered Luin, y’know, about six galaxies and—she says something like a hundred millennia away from here, but it could be yesterday and a league or two away for all I know. She wanted to boost the analysis power of the TARDIS computers by feeding off the nebula. That’s what she said, anyway. I don’t understand the logistics. What are you doing?”

Blue’s tugging one of her earrings out of her ears. She rubs it between her fingers for a moment—they’re ugly things, gifts from Lobelia, but Lobelia was going to be at the christening so she’d worn them just to put her cousin in a good mood—and then she tosses it out the door. If it’s a green screen, she reasons, it should hit something, or at least land. It doesn’t—she watches as the little flicker of gold starts to fall, and then rises again about a meter away from the door to the TARDIS, or phone box, or whatever this thing is. It also continues moving. Within seconds, she can no longer see it, and her head swims.

“Here, are you all right? Sit down, come on.”

Kíli manages her into a chair. Blue sticks her head between her knees and breaths until she can finally see again. _Space_ , she thinks. _I’m—I’m in a bloody spaceship. With aliens._ They don’t _look_ like aliens—they look more like models, really—but Tauriel-and/or-the-Doctor has those pointed ears and lithe fingers and Kíli is—well, he at least seems mostly human, but he’d said something about Erel Duin or whatever it was, hundreds of millennia and a million galaxies away, and—

 _Take the blows in stride, my girl_ , says Belladonna sternly in her ear. Blue takes a breath, and lets it out. Then she peeks up at Kíli through her fingers. “Um—why am I here, again?’

“Because the TARDIS wanted to find you,” says Tauriel. She vaults over the railing surrounding her mad scientist machines, and lands almost soundlessly against the floor. “And because I have not yet encountered a human being that the orcs were so desperate to find.”

“Orcs?” she echoes, and hides her shaking hands in her skirt. Her wrist is aching. “You—you mean those grey monster things?”

“They call themselves _orkh’rana,_ ” says Tauriel, trilling the R so beautifully that Blue nearly melts, “but most people in the galaxy call them _orcs_. Nasty creatures. What they want with you, Miss Baggins, I unfortunately do not have any idea.”

“Blue is fine,” says Blue, and then almost bites her tongue.   _Yes, Blue, let the strange woman with pointed ears who kidnapped you call you by your first name. Brilliant, as usual_. “Wait, how do you know my name?”

“Identification system,” says Tauriel, at the same moment Kíli says, “Your driver’s license.” They look at each other, and then smile, a kind of private sort of smile that reminds her of lovers. _So that’s how it is._

Kíli turns back to Blue. “Basically the spaceship went mad trying to find you, and now you have space scum tracking you too. We kind of want to find out why. Figured you might be interested to know, too.”

“Are—are they so bad, these orcs?”

“Oh, throat-cutters,” says Kíli easily. “Massacre whole planetary systems, orcs. They haven’t been seen this far into uninhabited territory in—”

Tauriel reaches out, and tugs on a braid he’s woven behind his ear. “Stop pretending you know anything about history. It is truly quite embarrassing.”

“Like _you_ know anything about history.”

“My history is perfect,” says Tauriel. She winks at Blue, and Blue blushes. Tauriel doesn’t seem to notice; her mouth tightens. “No. Forgive us for the suddenness of our departure, and the—lack of invitation, but I deemed it unwise to leave you on a planet and in a time when the orcs have found you so easily. Whatever it is about you that they wish to find—or that they fear—I have not yet been able to uncover. It is safest, I am afraid, for you to remain with us until we manage to discover the truth.”

“Safest? Safest _how_?”

“The orcs have been leaving your kin alone so far, but we don’t know that they’ll keep doing it if you go back to Earth.” Kíli grits his teeth. “Besides, one woman can’t fight against a whole orc pack. You’d die in a minute, and then they’d get whatever they want from you, and no one would be able to do anything to stop it.”

Something in her stomach is fizzling, like good champagne. She should be quite frightened, she thinks, but—oh, this is _so_ much more exciting than a concert. “In other words,” says Blue, “I’ve been kidnapped by aliens for my own safety.”

“That’s it in one,” says Kíli, and he winks at her too. “Besides, you never know. Might be fun.”

“If you wish, I will place you in a location that is free of orc intelligence. You would be safe there, until we find out what exactly they are hunting you for, and how to stop them from doing it.” Tauriel tilts her head. “If this is what you would prefer, we will set a course for Mirkwood immediately. It is not my home planet, but it is as close to one as I dare to claim, and it is quite comfortable, I think.”

It would be safer, she thinks. It would be _saner_. Blue reaches out, and touches the railing of the TARDIS with one hand. It seems to hum under her fingertips.

“Actually,” she says, “I think I like my costume room. Can I stay here?”

They beam at her.


End file.
